BrightStar Care Demonstrates Impact of Personal Care Services on Health Care Utilization in Latest Analysis by Avalere

New analysis shows BrightStar Care clients receiving in-home personal care experience lower rates of hospitalizations, Emergency Department visits, and Skilled Nursing Facility utilization across 30 different health care conditions, delivering lower costs for payers

Demonstrating superior clinical outcomes has been a long-standing challenge for the home care industry due to fragmented care standards across states, the lack of standardized measures in personal care, and the lack of visibility home health care agencies have on claims data for patients. The results of the analysis suggest that BrightStar Care’s interventions were correlated with lower rates of inpatient admissions, emergency department visits, home health and skilled nursing facility utilization for clients diagnosed with certain chronic conditions.

Avalere Health compared BrightStar Care clients to a matched control group of Medicare Beneficiaries and assessed the relative utilization of Medicare services between the two populations for different health care conditions with the average age of the population being 80. Avalere’s analysis revealed that the change (baseline vs. follow-up) in the total cost of care was up to $29,902 lower for patients who received BrightStar Care services when compared to patients who did not receive services.

The impact was concentrated in the subpopulation of patients with one of 30 chronic medical conditions, including multiple sclerosis, traumatic amputations, lung cancer, and seizure disorders, among others.

The analysis provides the latest evidence that personal care services, such as medication management, meal preparation, personal care assistance, and patient education, can have a positive impact on overall health, leading, in turn, to a reduction in healthcare costs and value creation for payers. BrightStar Care’s nurse-led care teams coordinate post-acute transitions, oversight on medication compliance, patient education and ongoing monitoring of patient change of condition. This assistance prevents avoidable hospitalizations and emergency room usage and improves the quality of life for clients.

“BrightStar Care is committed to providing clients with a higher standard of home care. As such, we built our personal care model around a clinical platform with RN-led care teams operating under Joint Commission standards,” said Shelly Sun, CEO and Founder of BrightStar Care. “Avalere’s analysis helped highlight the value of outstanding personal care clinical programming and attentiveness in delivering a higher caliber of care and safety to our clients.

Although further research is required, the results suggest that personal care can make a difference in outcomes and help reduce the costs of care for numerous health conditions.”

The findings from this analysis demonstrate the important role personal care providers can play in the health care ecosystem as patient care shifts to the home and payers optimize their highest cost beneficiaries by providing supplemental services to address all the social determinants of health. These findings reinforced recent research from Moving Health Home, a coalition advocating for more care to be provided in the home, that showed home-based care can reduce the likelihood of hospital readmissions and reduce mortality. That analysis found that patients who utilize home-based care services within 14 days of discharge from an acute care facility are about 25% more likely to avoid readmission within 30 days of discharge.